Financial Times, 22 Feb 96 Digital watermark protects copyright Scientists at the NEC Research Institute in Princeton believe they have developed "a fundamental enabling technology" for protecting the copyright of images and music on the Internet. They have developed a secure method of producing a digital watermark, an invisible code that identifies the owner, which is permanently embedded in the multimedia data. Attempts to remove the watermark would be virtually impossible without degrading the image quality. Moreover, counterfeiting would be almost impossible, says NEC. the Japanese electronics company. The digital watermark is designed to be used in conjunction with cryptography, which limits access to encrypted data to legitimate users. NEC Research Institute: US, tel 609-520-1555 fax 609-951-2481.